The ''Groma'' or ''gruma'' (altered from Greek ''gnomon'' ''γνόμων'' "indicator", possibly through Etruscan) was the principal Roman surveying instrument. It comprised a vertical staff with horizontal cross pieces mounted at right-angles on a bracket. Each cross piece had a plumb line hanging vertically at each end. It was used to survey straight lines and right-angles, thence squares or rectangles. The same name was given to:

the center of any new military camp, ie the point from which was traced the regular grid by using the ''groma'' instrument

the center of a new town, from which the gromatici (surveyors) began to lay out cardo and decumanus grid, with a plough and a pair of oxen

The groma surveying instrument originated from Mesopotamia, from where it was imported by the Greeks in the 4th century BC. Subsequently, it was brought to Rome by the Etruscans.

Notes

References

University of Pennsylvania - Corinth Computer Project

External links

BBC: h2g2: The Groma: The Tool That Built An Empire

Category:Ancient Roman architecture Category:Surveying instruments

ca:Groma (instrument) cs:Groma de:Groma es:Groma (instrumento de medida) fr:Groma (instrument de mesure) it:Groma la:Groma nl:Groma sk:Groma ru:Грома

Coordinates	51°43′28″N19°38′16″N
death date	(aged 83)
occupation	Poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner
movement	Romanticism
influences	François-René de Chateaubriand, Walter Scott, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Alphonse de Lamartine, William Shakespeare
influenced	Louis-Honoré Fréchette, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ayn Rand, Irvine Welsh, Albert Camus, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Oscar Wilde, Jean Cocteau, Gustave Flaubert, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle,
signature	Victor Hugo Signature.svg
birth place	Besançon, France
death place	Paris, France }}

Victor-Marie Hugo () (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France.

In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, ''Les Contemplations'' and ''La Légende des siècles'' stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels ''Les Misérables'' and ''Notre-Dame de Paris'' (also known in English as ''The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'').

Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views refined as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.

Life

Hugo was the third, illegitimate, son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828) and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821); his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo (1798–1855) and Eugène Hugo (1800–1837). He was born in 1802 in Besançon (in the region of Franche-Comté) and lived in France for the majority of his life. However, he decided exile as a result of Napoleon III's Coup d'état at the end of 1851. Hugo lived briefly in Brussels (1851) then moved to the Channel Islands, firstly to Jersey (1852–55) and then to the smaller island of Guernsey (1855–1870). Although a general amnesty was proclaimed by Napoleon III in 1859; Hugo stayed in exile, only ending it when Napoleon III was forced from power as a result of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Hugo returned again to Guernsey (1872–73), after suffering through the Siege of Paris, before finally returning to France for the remainder of his life.

Hugo's early childhood was marked by great events. Napoléon was proclaimed Emperor two years after Hugo's birth, and the Bourbon Monarchy was restored before his thirteenth birthday. The opposing political and religious views of Hugo's parents reflected the forces that would battle for supremacy in France throughout his life: Hugo's father was an officer who ranked very high in Napoleon's army until he failed in Spain (one of the reasons why his name is not present on the ''Arc de Triomphe''). He was an atheist republican who considered Napoléon a hero; his mother was an extreme Catholic Royalist who is believed to have taken as her lover General Victor Lahorie, executed in 1812 for plotting against Napoléon. Since Hugo's father, Joseph, was an officer, they moved frequently and Hugo learned much from these travels. On his family's journey to Naples, he saw the vast Alpine passes and the snowy peaks, the magnificently blue Mediterranean, and Rome during its festivities. Though he was only nearly six at the time, he remembered the half-year-long trip vividly. They stayed in Naples for a few months and then headed back to Paris.

Sophie followed her husband to posts in Italy (where Léopold served as a governor of a province near Naples) and Spain (where he took charge of three Spanish provinces). Weary of the constant moving required by military life, and at odds with her husband's lack of Catholic beliefs, Sophie separated temporarily from Léopold in 1803 and settled in Paris. Thereafter she dominated Hugo's education and upbringing. As a result, Hugo's early work in poetry and fiction reflect a passionate devotion to both King and Faith. It was only later, during the events leading up to France's 1848 Revolution, that he would begin to rebel against his Catholic Royalist education and instead champion Republicanism and Freethought.

Young Victor fell in love and against his mother's wishes, became secretly engaged to his childhood friend Adèle Foucher (1803–1868).

Unusually close to his mother, he married Adèle (in 1822) only after his mother's death in 1821. They had their first child Léopold in 1823, but the boy died in infancy. Hugo's other children were Léopoldine (28 August 1824), Charles (4 November 1826), François-Victor (28 October 1828) and Adèle (24 August 1830). Hugo published his first novel the following year (''Han d'Islande'', 1823), and his second three years later (''Bug-Jargal'', 1826). Between 1829 and 1840 he would publish five more volumes of poetry (''Les Orientales'', 1829; ''Les Feuilles d'automne'', 1831; ''Les Chants du crépuscule'', 1835; ''Les Voix intérieures'', 1837; and ''Les Rayons et les ombres'', 1840), cementing his reputation as one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets of his time.

Victor Hugo was devastated when his oldest and favorite daughter, Léopoldine, died at age 19 in 1843, shortly after her marriage. She drowned in the Seine at Villequier, pulled down by her heavy skirts, when a boat overturned. Her young husband Charles Vacquerie also died trying to save her. Victor Hugo was traveling with his mistress at the time in the south of France, and learned about Léopoldine's death from a newspaper as he sat in a cafe. He describes his shock and grief in his poem ''À Villequier'':

''Hélas ! vers le passé tournant un oeil d'envie,'' ''Sans que rien ici-bas puisse m'en consoler,'' ''Je regarde toujours ce moment de ma vie'' ''Où je l'ai vue ouvrir son aile et s'envoler !''

''Je verrai cet instant jusqu'à ce que je meure,'' ''L'instant, pleurs superflus !'' ''Où je criai : L'enfant que j'avais tout à l'heure,'' ''Quoi donc ! je ne l'ai plus !''

''

Alas! turning an envious eye towards the past, unconsolable by anything on earth, I keep looking at that moment of my life when I saw her open her wings and fly away!

I will see that instant until I die, that instant—too much for tears! when I cried out: "The child that I had just now-- what! I don't have her any more!"

He wrote many poems afterwards about his daughter's life and death, and at least one biographer claims he never completely recovered from it. His most famous poem is probably ''Demain, dès l'aube'', in which he describes visiting her grave.

Writings

Like many young writers of his generation, Hugo was profoundly influenced by François-René de Chateaubriand, the famous figure in the literary movement of Romanticism and France's preëminent literary figure during the early 19th century. In his youth, Hugo resolved to be "Chateaubriand or nothing," and his life would come to parallel that of his predecessor in many ways. Like Chateaubriand, Hugo would further the cause of Romanticism, become involved in politics as a champion of Republicanism, and be forced into exile due to his political stances. The precocious passion and eloquence of Hugo's early work brought success and fame at an early age. His first collection of poetry (''Odes et poésies diverses'') was published in 1822, when Hugo was only twenty years old, and earned him a royal pension from Louis XVIII. Though the poems were admired for their spontaneous fervor and fluency, it was the collection that followed four years later in 1826 (''Odes et Ballades'') that revealed Hugo to be a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song.

Victor Hugo's first mature work of fiction appeared in 1829, and reflected the acute social conscience that would infuse his later work. ''Le Dernier jour d'un condamné'' (''The Last Day of a Condemned Man'') would have a profound influence on later writers such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. ''Claude Gueux'', a documentary short story about a real-life murderer who had been executed in France, appeared in 1834, and was later considered by Hugo himself to be a precursor to his great work on social injustice, ''Les Misérables''. But Hugo's first full-length novel would be the enormously successful ''Notre-Dame de Paris'' (''The Hunchback of Notre-Dame''), which was published in 1831 and quickly translated into other languages across Europe. One of the effects of the novel was to shame the City of Paris into restoring the much-neglected Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was attracting thousands of tourists who had read the popular novel. The book also inspired a renewed appreciation for pre-renaissance buildings, which thereafter began to be actively preserved.

Hugo began planning a major novel about social misery and injustice as early as the 1830s, but it would take a full 17 years for ''Les Misérables'', to be realized and finally published in 1862. Hugo was acutely aware of the quality of the novel and publication of the work went to the highest bidder. The Belgian publishing house Lacroix and Verboeckhoven undertook a marketing campaign unusual for the time, issuing press releases about the work a full six months before the launch. It also initially published only the first part of the novel ("Fantine"), which was launched simultaneously in major cities. Installments of the book sold out within hours, and had enormous impact on French society. The critical establishment was generally hostile to the novel; Taine found it insincere, Barbey d'Aurevilly complained of its vulgarity, Flaubert found within it "neither truth nor greatness", the Goncourts lambasted its artificiality, and Baudelaire – despite giving favorable reviews in newspapers – castigated it in private as "tasteless and inept." ''Les Misérables'' proved popular enough with the masses that the issues it highlighted were soon on the agenda of the French National Assembly. Today the novel remains his most enduringly popular work. It is popular worldwide, has been adapted for cinema, television and stage shows.

The shortest correspondence in history is said to have been between Hugo and his publisher Hurst & Blackett in 1862. It is said Hugo was on vacation when ''Les Misérables'' (which is over 1200 pages) was published. He sent a letter containing the single-character message '?' to his publisher, who replied with a single '!'.

Hugo turned away from social/political issues in his next novel, ''Les Travailleurs de la Mer'' (''Toilers of the Sea''), published in 1866. Nonetheless, the book was well received, perhaps due to the previous success of ''Les Misérables''. Dedicated to the channel island of Guernsey where he spent 15 years of exile, Hugo's depiction of Man's battle with the sea and the horrible creatures lurking beneath its depths spawned an unusual fad in Paris: Squids. From squid dishes and exhibitions, to squid hats and parties, Parisians became fascinated by these unusual sea creatures, which at the time were still considered by many to be mythical. The word used in Guernsey to refer to squid (''pieuvre'', also sometimes applied to octopus) was to enter the French language as a result of its use in the book. Hugo returned to political and social issues in his next novel, ''L'Homme Qui Rit'' (''The Man Who Laughs''), which was published in 1869 and painted a critical picture of the aristocracy. However, the novel was not as successful as his previous efforts, and Hugo himself began to comment on the growing distance between himself and literary contemporaries such as Flaubert and Émile Zola, whose realist and naturalist novels were now exceeding the popularity of his own work. His last novel, ''Quatre-vingt-treize'' (''Ninety-Three''), published in 1874, dealt with a subject that Hugo had previously avoided: the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Though Hugo's popularity was on the decline at the time of its publication, many now consider ''Ninety-Three'' to be a work on par with Hugo's better-known novels.

Political life and exile

After three unsuccessful attempts, Hugo was finally elected to the Académie française in 1841, solidifying his position in the world of French arts and letters. A group of French academiciens, particularly Etienne de Jouy, were fighting against the "romantic evolution" and had managed to delay Victor Hugo's election. Thereafter he became increasingly involved in French politics. He was elevated to the peerage by King Louis-Philippe in 1841 and entered the Higher Chamber as a ''pair de France'', where he spoke against the death penalty and social injustice, and in favour of freedom of the press and self-government for Poland. However, he was also becoming more supportive of the Republican form of government and, following the 1848 Revolution and the formation of the Second Republic, was elected to the Constitutional Assembly and the Legislative Assembly.

When Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) seized complete power in 1851, establishing an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor to France. He relocated to Brussels, then Jersey, and finally settled with his family at Hauteville House in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, where he would live in exile until 1870.

While in exile, Hugo published his famous political pamphlets against Napoleon III, ''Napoléon le Petit'' and ''Histoire d'un crime''. The pamphlets were banned in France, but nonetheless had a strong impact there. He also composed or published some of his best work during his period in Guernsey, including ''Les Misérables'', and three widely praised collections of poetry (''Les Châtiments'', 1853; ''Les Contemplations'', 1856; and ''La Légende des siècles'', 1859).

He convinced the government of Queen Victoria to spare the lives of six Irish people convicted of terrorist activities and his influence was credited in the removal of the death penalty from the constitutions of Geneva, Portugal and Colombia. He had also pleaded for Benito Juárez to spare the recently captured emperor Maximilian I of Mexico but to no avail. His complete archives (published by Pauvert) show also that he wrote a letter asking the USA, for the sake of their own reputation in the future, to spare John Brown's life, but the letter arrived after Brown was executed.

Although Napoleon III granted an amnesty to all political exiles in 1859, Hugo declined, as it meant he would have to curtail his criticisms of the government. It was only after Napoleon III fell from power and the Third Republic was proclaimed that Hugo finally returned to his homeland in 1870, where he was promptly elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.

He was in Paris during the siege by the Prussian army in 1870, famously eating animals given to him by the Paris zoo. As the siege continued, and food became ever more scarce, he wrote in his diary that he was reduced to "eating the unknown."

Because of his concern for the rights of artists and copyright, he was a founding member of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, which led to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. However, in Pauvert's published archives, he states strongly that "any work of art has two authors : the people who confusely feels something, a creator who translates these feelings, and the people again who consecrates his vision of that feeling. When one of the authors dies, the rights should totally be granted back to the other, the people".

Religious views

Hugo's religious views changed radically over the course of his life. In his youth, he identified himself as a Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. From there he became a non-practicing Catholic, and increasingly expressed anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He frequented Spiritism during his exile (where he participated also in many séances conducted by Madame Delphine de Girardin), and in later years settled into a Rationalist Deism similar to that espoused by Voltaire. A census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he was a Catholic, and he replied, "No. A Freethinker".

After that point, Hugo never lost his antipathy towards the Catholic Church, due largely to what he saw as the Church's indifference to the plight of the working class under the oppression of the monarchy; and perhaps also due to the frequency with which Hugo's work appeared on the Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Hugo counted 740 attacks on ''Les Misérables'' in the Catholic press). On the deaths of his sons Charles and François-Victor, he insisted that they be buried without a crucifix or priest, and in his will made the same stipulation about his own death and funeral. However, although Hugo believed Catholic dogma to be outdated and dying, he never directly attacked the actual doctrines of the Church.

Hugo's Rationalism can be found in poems such as ''Torquemada'' (1869, about religious fanaticism), ''The Pope'' (1878, anti-clerical), ''Religions and Religion'' (1880, denying the usefulness of churches) and, published posthumously, ''The End of Satan'' and ''God'' (1886 and 1891 respectively, in which he represents Christianity as a griffin and Rationalism as an angel). "Religions pass away, but God remains", Hugo declared. Christianity would eventually disappear, he predicted, but people would still believe in "God, Soul, and the Power."

Victor Hugo and music

Although Hugo's many talents did not include exceptional musical ability, he nevertheless had a great impact on the music world through the inspiration that his works provided for composers of the 19th and 20th century. Hugo himself particularly enjoyed the music of Gluck and Weber and greatly admired Beethoven, and rather unusually for his time, he also appreciated works by composers from earlier centuries such as Palestrina and Monteverdi. Two famous musicians of the 19th century were friends of Hugo: Berlioz and Liszt. The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano – even though only with one finger! Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera ''La Esmeralda'' which was based on the character in ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame''. Although for various reasons the opera closed soon after its fifth performance and is little known today, it has been recently enjoying a revival, both in a piano/song concert version by Liszt at the Festival international Victor Hugo et Égaux 2007 and in a full orchestral version presented in July 2008 at Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon.

Well over one thousand musical compositions have been inspired by Hugo's works from the 19th century until the present day. In particular, Hugo's plays, in which he rejected the rules of classical theatre in favour of romantic drama, attracted the interest of many composers who adapted them into operas. More than one hundred operas are based on Hugo's works and among them are Donizetti's ''Lucrezia Borgia'' (1833), Verdi's ''Rigoletto'' (1851) and Ernani (1844), and Ponchielli's ''La Gioconda'' (1876). Hugo's novels as well as his plays have been a great source of inspiration for musicians, stirring them to create not only opera and ballet but musical theatre such as Notre-Dame de Paris and the ever-popular Les Misérables, London West End's longest running musical. Additionally, Hugo's beautiful poems have attracted an exceptional amount of interest from musicians, and numerous melodies have been based on his poetry by composers such as Berlioz, Bizet, Fauré, Franck, Lalo, Liszt, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Rachmaninov and Wagner.

Today, Hugo's work continues to stimulate musicians to create new compositions. For example, Hugo's novel against capital punishment, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, has recently been adapted into an opera by David Alagna (libretto by Frédérico Alagna). Their brother, tenor Roberto Alagna, performed in the opera's premiere in Paris in the summer of 2007 and again in February 2008 in Valencia with Erwin Schrott as part of the Festival international Victor Hugo et Égaux 2008. In Guernsey, every two years the Victor Hugo International Music Festival attracts a wide range of musicians and the premiere of songs specially commissioned from such composers as Guillaume Connesson, Richard Dubugnon, Olivier Kaspar and Thierry Escaich and based on Hugo's poetry.

Declining years and death

When Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, the country hailed him as a national hero. Despite his popularity Hugo lost his bid for reelection to the National Assembly in 1872. Within a brief period, he suffered a mild stroke, his daughter Adèle's internment in an insane asylum, and the death of his two sons. (Adèle's biography inspired the movie ''The Story of Adele H.'') His wife Adèle had died in 1868. His faithful mistress, Juliette Drouet, died in 1883, only two years before his own death. Despite his personal loss, Hugo remained committed to the cause of political change. On 30 January 1876 Hugo was elected to the newly created Senate. The last phase of his political career is considered a failure. Hugo took on the role of a maverick and got little done in the Senate.

In February 1881 Hugo celebrated his 79th birthday. To honor the fact that he was entering his eightieth year, one of the greatest tributes to a living writer was held. The celebrations began on the 25th when Hugo was presented with a Sèvres vase, the traditional gift for sovereigns. On the 27th one of the largest parades in French history was held. Marchers stretched from Avenue d'Eylau, down the Champs-Élysées, and all the way to the center of Paris. The paraders marched for six hours to pass Hugo as he sat in the window at his house. Every inch and detail of the event was for Hugo; the official guides even wore cornflowers as an allusion to Fantine's song in ''Les Misérables.''

Victor Hugo's death on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83, generated intense national mourning. He was not only revered as a towering figure in literature, he was a statesman who shaped the Third Republic and democracy in France. More than two million people joined his funeral procession in Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he was buried. He shares a crypt within the Panthéon with Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola. Most large French towns and cities have a street named for him. The avenue where he died, in Paris, now bears his name.

His last will

He left a set of five sentences as his last will to be officially published :

« Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres. Je veux être enterré dans leur corbillard.

Je refuse l'oraison de toutes les Eglises. Je demande une prière à toutes les âmes.

Je crois en Dieu. »

(I leave 50 000 francs to the poor. I want to be buried in their hearse.

I refuse [funeral] orations of all churches. I beg a prayer to all souls.

I believe in God.)

Drawings

Victor Hugo was a prolific visual artist, producing more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime. Originally pursued as a casual hobby, drawing became more important to Hugo shortly before his exile, when he made the decision to stop writing in order to devote himself to politics. Drawing became his exclusive creative outlet during the period 1848–1851.

Hugo worked only on paper, and on a small scale; usually in dark brown or black pen-and-ink wash, sometimes with touches of white, and rarely with color. The surviving drawings are surprisingly accomplished and "modern" in their style and execution, foreshadowing the experimental techniques of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

He would not hesitate to use his children's stencils, ink blots, puddles and stains, lace impressions, "pliage" or folding (i.e. Rorschach blots), "grattage" or rubbing, often using the charcoal from match sticks or his fingers instead of pen or brush. Sometimes he would even toss in coffee or soot to get the effects he wanted. It is reported that Hugo often drew with his left hand or without looking at the page, or during Spiritualist séances, in order to access his unconscious mind, a concept only later popularized by Sigmund Freud.

Hugo kept his artwork out of the public eye, fearing it would overshadow his literary work. However, he enjoyed sharing his drawings with his family and friends, often in the form of ornately handmade calling cards, many of which were given as gifts to visitors when he was in political exile. Some of his work was shown to, and appreciated by, contemporary artists such as Van Gogh and Delacroix; the latter expressed the opinion that if Hugo had decided to become a painter instead of a writer, he would have outshone the artists of their century.

Gallery:

Memorials

The people of Guernsey erected a statue in Candie Gardens (St. Peter Port) to commemorate his stay in the islands. The City of Paris has preserved his residences Hauteville House, Guernsey and 6, Place des Vosges, Paris as museums. The house where he stayed in Vianden, Luxembourg, in 1871 has also become a commemorative museum.

Hugo is venerated as a saint in the Vietnamese religion of Cao Dai.

The Avenue Victor-Hugo in the XVIème arrondissement of Paris bears Hugo's name, and links the Place de l'Étoile to the vicinity of the Bois de Boulogne by way of the Place Victor-Hugo. This square is served by a Paris Métro stop also named in his honor. A number of streets and avenues throughout France are likewise named after him. The school Lycée Victor Hugo was founded in his town of birth, Besançon in France. Avenue Victor-Hugo, located in Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada, was named to honor him.

In the city of Avellino, Italy, Victor Hugo lived briefly stayed in what is now known as Il Palazzo Culturale, when reuniting with his father, Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, in 1808. Victor would later write about his brief stay here quoting "C’était un palais de marbre...".

In Havana, Cuba there is a park named after him.

Works

Published during Hugo's lifetime

''Cromwell'' preface only (1819)

''Odes et poésies diverses'' (1822)

''Odes (Hugo)'' (1823)

''Han d'Islande'' (1823) (''Hans of Iceland'')

''Nouvelles Odes'' (1824)

''Bug-Jargal'' (1826)

''Nils Gunnar Lie's history'' (1826)

''Odes et Ballades'' (1826)

''Cromwell'' (1827)

''Les Orientales'' (1829)

''Le Dernier jour d'un condamné'' (1829) (''The Last Day of a Condemned Man'')

''Hernani'' (1830)

''Notre-Dame de Paris'' (1831), (''The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'')

''Marion Delorme'' (1831)

''Les Feuilles d'automne'' (1831)

''Le roi s'amuse'' (1832)

''Lucrèce Borgia'' (1833) (''Lucretia Borgia'')

''Marie Tudor'' (1833)

''Littérature et philosophie mêlées'' (1834)

''Claude Gueux'' (1834)

''Angelo, tyran de padoue'' (1835)

''Les Chants du crépuscule'' (1835)

''La Esmeralda (only libretto of an opera written by Victor Hugo himself)'' (1836)

''Les Voix intérieures'' (1837)

''Ruy Blas'' (1838)

''Les Rayons et les ombres'' (1840)

''Le Rhin'' (1842)

''Les Burgraves'' (1843)

''Napoléon le Petit'' (1852)

''Les Châtiments'' (1853)

''Les Contemplations'' (1856)

''Les TRYNE'' (1856)

''La Légende des siècles'' (1859)

''Les Misérables'' (1862)

''William Shakespeare'' (1864)

''Les Chansons des rues et des bois'' (1865)

''Les Travailleurs de la Mer'' (1866), (''Toilers of the Sea'')

''La voix de Guernsey'' (1867)

''L'Homme qui rit'' (1869), (''The Man Who Laughs'')

''L'Année terrible'' (1872)

''Quatrevingt-treize'' (''Ninety-Three'') (1874)

''Mes Fils'' (1874)

''Actes et paroles – Avant l'exil'' (1875)

''Actes et paroles – Pendant l'exil'' (1875)

''Actes et paroles – Depuis l'exil'' (1876)

''La Légende des Siècles 2e série'' (1877)

''L'Art d'être grand-père'' (1877)

''Histoire d'un crime'' 1re partie (1877)

''Histoire d'un crime'' 2e partie (1878)

''Le Pape'' (1878)

''La pitié suprême'' (1879)

''Religions et religion'' (1880)

''L'Âne'' (1880)

''Les Quatres vents de l'esprit'' (1881)

''Torquemada'' (1882)

''La Légende des siècles'' Tome III (1883)

''L'Archipel de la Manche'' (1883)

Poems of Victor Hugo

Published posthumously

''Théâtre en liberté'' (1886)

''La Fin de Satan'' (1886)

''Choses vues'' (1887)

''Toute la lyre'' (1888)

''Amy Robsart'' (1889)

''Les Jumeaux'' (1889)

''Actes et Paroles'' Depuis l'exil, 1876–1885 (1889)

''Alpes et Pyrénées'' (1890)

''Dieu'' (1891)

''France et Belgique'' (1892)

''Toute la lyre – dernière série'' (1893)

''Les fromages'' (1895)

''Correspondences – Tome I'' (1896)

''Correspondences – Tome II'' (1898)

''Les années funestes'' (1898)

''Choses vues – nouvelle série'' (1900)

''Post-scriptum de ma vie'' (1901)

''Dernière Gerbe'' (1902)

''Mille francs de récompense'' (1934)

''Océan. Tas de pierres'' (1942)

''L'Intervention'' (1951)

''Conversations with Eternity'' (1998)

Online texts

Works by Victor Hugo at Internet Archive

Works by Victor Hugo at The Online Books Page

Political speeches by Victor Hugo: Victor Hugo, My Revenge is Fraternity!

Selected Poetry

Biography and speech from 1851

Obituary in ''The Times''

References

Online references

Afran, Charles (1997). “Victor Hugo: French Dramatist”. Website: Discover France. (Originally published in ''Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia'', 1997, v.9.0.1.) Retrieved November 2005.

Bates, Alfred (1906). “Victor Hugo”. Website: Theatre History. (Originally published in ''The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization'', vol. 9. ed. Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 11–13.) Retrieved November 2005.

Bates, Alfred (1906). “Hernani”. Website: Theatre History. (Originally published in ''The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization'', vol. 9. ed. Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 20–23.) Retrieved November 2005.

Bates, Alfred (1906). “Hugo’s Cromwell”. Website: Theatre History. (Originally published in ''The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization'', vol. 9. ed. Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 18–19.) Retrieved November 2005.

Bittleston, Misha (uncited date). "Drawings of Victor Hugo". Website: Misha Bittleston. Retrieved November 2005.

Burnham, I.G. (1896). “Amy Robsart”. Website: Theatre History. (Originally published in ''Victor Hugo: Dramas''. Philadelphia: The Rittenhouse Press, 1896. pp. 203–6, 401–2.) Retrieved November 2005.

Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2001–05). “Hugo, Victor Marie, Vicomte”. Website: Bartleby, Great Books Online. Retrieved November 2005. Retrieved November 2005.

Haine, W. Scott (1997). “Victor Hugo”. Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions. Website: Ohio University. Retrieved November 2005.

Illi, Peter (2001–2004). “Victor Hugo: Plays”. Website: The Victor Hugo Website. Retrieved November 2005.

Karlins, N.F. (1998). "Octopus With the Initials V.H." Website: ArtNet. Retrieved November 2005.

Liukkonen, Petri (2000). “Victor Hugo (1802–1885)”. Books and Writers. Website: Pegasos: A Literature Related Resource Site. Retrieved November 2005.

Meyer, Ronald Bruce (2004). “Victor Hugo”. Website: Ronald Bruce Meyer. Retrieved November 2005.

Portasio, Manoel (2009). “Victor Hugo e o Espiritismo”. Website: Sir William Crookes Spiritist Society. (Portuguese) Retrieved August 2010.

Robb, Graham (1997). “A Sabre in the Night”. Website: New York Times (Books). (Excerpt from Graham, Robb (1997). ''Victor Hugo: A Biography''. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.) Retrieved November 2005.

Roche, Isabel (2005). “Victor Hugo: Biography”. Meet the Writers. Website: Barnes & Noble. (From the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'', 2005.) Retrieved November 2005.

Schneider, Maria do Carmo M (2010). “Victor Hugo, gênio sem fronteiras”. Website: MiniWeb Educacao. (Portuguese) Retrieved August 2010.

Uncited Author. “Victor Hugo”. Website: Spartacus Educational. Retrieved November 2005.

Uncited Author. “Timeline of Victor Hugo”. Website: BBC. Retrieved November 2005.

Uncited Author. (2000–2005). “Victor Hugo”. Website: The Literature Network. Retrieved November 2005.

Uncited Author. "Hugo Caricature". Website: Présence de la Littérature a l'école. Retrieved November 2005.

Further reading

Barbou, Alfred (1882). ''Victor Hugo and His Times''. University Press of the Pacific: 2001 paper back edition. Book sources

Barnett, Marva A., ed. (2009). ''Victor Hugo on Things That Matter: A Reader''. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Book sources

Brombert, Victor H. (1984). ''Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel''. Boston: Harvard University Press. Book sources

Davidson, A.F. (1912). ''Victor Hugo: His Life and Work''. University Press of the Pacific: 2003 paperback edition. Book sources

Dow, Leslie Smith (1993). ''Adele Hugo: La Miserable''. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions. Book sources

Falkayn, David (2001). ''Guide to the Life, Times, and Works of Victor Hugo''. University Press of the Pacific. Book sources

Feller, Martin, ''Der Dichter in der Politik. Victor Hugo und der deutsch-französische Krieg von 1870/71. Untersuchungen zum französischen Deutschlandbild und zu Hugos Rezeption in Deutschland.'' Doctoral Dissertation, Marburg 1988.

Frey, John Andrew (1999). ''A Victor Hugo Encyclopedia''. Greenwood Press. Book sources

Grant, Elliot (1946). ''The Career of Victor Hugo''. Harvard University Press. Out of print.

Halsall, A.W. et al. (1998). ''Victor Hugo and the Romantic Drama''. University of Toronto Press.Book sources

Hart, Simon Allen (2004). ''Lady in the Shadows: The Life and Times of Julie Drouet, Mistress, Companion and Muse to Victor Hugo.'' Publish American. Book sources

Houston, John Porter (1975). ''Victor Hugo''. New York: Twayne Publishers. Book sources

Hovasse, Jean-Marc (2001), ''Victor Hugo: Avant l'exil''. Paris: Fayard. Book sources

Hovasse, Jean-Marc (2008), ''Victor Hugo: Pendant l'exil I''. Paris: Fayard. Book sources

Ireson, J.C. (1997). ''Victor Hugo: A Companion to His Poetry''. Clarendon Press. Book sources

Laster, Arnaud (2002). ''Hugo à l'Opéra''. Paris: L'Avant-Scène Opéra, no. 208.

Maurois, Andre (1956). ''Olympio: The Life of Victor Hugo''. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Maurois, Andre (1966). ''Victor Hugo and His World''. London: Thames and Hudson. Out of print.

Pouchain, Gérard and Robert Sabourin (1992). ''Juliette Drouet, ou, La dépaysée''. Paris: Fayard. Book sources

Robb, Graham (1997). ''Victor Hugo: A Biography''. W.W. Norton & Company: 1999 paperback edition. Book sources, (description/reviews at wwnorton.com)

Tonazzi, Pascal (2007) ''Florilège de Notre-Dame de Paris (anthologie)'' Paris, Editions Arléa ISBN 2-86959-795-9

External links

France of Victor Hugo

Guernsey’s Official Victor Hugo Website

Guernsey’s Victor Hugo International Music Festival

Victor Hugo Central

Victor Hugo's works: text, concordances and frequency lists

1867 Caricature of Victor Hugo by André Gill

Victor Hugo le dessinateur

Translation of Victor Hugo note found in "Hunchback of Notre Dame," french edition

English translation of Hugo's ''At Dawn Tomorrow'' (''Demain, dès l'aube'')

Another English translation of ''Demain, dès l'aube''

English translation of Hugo's ''A Villequier''

English translation of Hugo's ''Oh ! je fus comme fou dans le premier moment'' ('Oh! I was like a crazy man in the first moment') on the death of his daughter Léopoldine

Official site of the Société des Amis de Victor Hugo

Official site of the Festival international Victor Hugo et Égaux

Translation of The legend of Victor Hugo by Paul Lafargue

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Coordinates	51°43′28″N19°38′16″N
Region	Western Philosophy
Era	19th century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Henry David Thoreau
Birth date	July 12, 1817
Birth place	Concord, Massachusetts
Death date	May 06, 1862
Death place	Concord, Massachusetts
School tradition	Transcendentalism
Main interests	Natural history
Notable ideas	Abolitionism, tax resistance, development criticism, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, direct action, environmentalism, anarchism, simple living
Influences	Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe
Influenced	Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, William Butler Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, E. B. White, E. O. Wilson, B. F. Skinner, George Bernard Shaw}}

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) (properly pronounced ''Thaw''-roe) was an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay ''Civil Disobedience'', an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist. Though ''Civil Disobedience'' seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government – "I ask for, not at once no government, but ''at once'' a better government" – the direction of this improvement points toward anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." Richard Drinnon partly blames Thoreau for the ambiguity, noting that Thoreau's "sly satire, his liking for wide margins for his writing, and his fondness for paradox provided ammunition for widely divergent interpretations of 'Civil Disobedience.'" He further points out that although Thoreau writes that he only wants "at once" a better government, that does not rule out the possibility that a little later he might favor no government.

Early life and education

He was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts, to John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was of French origin and was born in Jersey. His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard's 1766 student "Butter Rebellion", the first recorded student protest in the Colonies. David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become "Henry David" until after college, although he never petitioned to make a legal name change. He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia. Thoreau's birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord and is currently the focus of preservation efforts. The house is original, but it now stands about 100 yards away from its first site.

Amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau's aunt each wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word "thorough", whose standard American pronunciation rhymes with "furrow". Edward Emerson wrote that the name should be pronounced "Thó-row, the ''h'' sounded, and accent on the first syllable." In appearance he was homely, with a nose that he called "my most prominent feature." Of his face, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "[Thoreau] is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty." Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted many women found attractive. However, Louisa May Alcott mentioned to Ralph Waldo Emerson that Thoreau's facial hair "will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity."

Thoreau studied at Harvard University between 1833 and 1837. He lived in Hollis Hall and took courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science. A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. In fact, the master's degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit: Harvard College offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college." His comment was: "Let every sheep keep its own skin", a reference to the tradition of diplomas being written on sheepskin vellum.

Return to Concord: 1837–1841

The traditional professions open to college graduates—law, the church, business, medicine—failed to interest Thoreau, so in 1835 he took a leave of absence from Harvard, during which he taught school in Canton, Massachusetts. After he graduated in 1837, he joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but resigned after a few weeks rather than administer corporal punishment. He and his brother John then opened a grammar school in Concord in 1838 called Concord Academy. They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school ended when John became fatally ill from tetanus in 1842 after cutting himself while shaving. He died in his brother Henry's arms.

Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson took a paternal and at times patronizing interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, including Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son Julian Hawthorne, who was a boy at the time.

Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical, ''The Dial'', and Emerson lobbied editor Margaret Fuller to publish those writings. Thoreau's first essay published there was ''Aulus Persius Flaccus,'' an essay on the playwright of the same name, published in ''The Dial'' in July 1840. It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry on October 22, 1837, reads, "'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day."

Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed Transcendentalism, a loose and eclectic idealist philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts," as Emerson wrote in ''Nature'' (1836).

On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved into the Emerson house. There, from 1841–1844, he served as the children's tutor, editorial assistant, and repair man/gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson on Staten Island, and tutored the family sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representative Horace Greeley.

Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's pencil factory, which he continued to do for most of his adult life. He rediscovered the process to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite by using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found in New Hampshire and bought in 1821 by relative Charles Dunbar. (The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, was patented by Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795). His other source had been Tantiusques, an Indian operated mine in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Later, Thoreau converted the factory to produce plumbago (graphite), which was used to ink typesetting machines.

Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed of Walden Woods. He spoke often of finding a farm to buy or lease, which he felt would give him a means to support himself while also providing enough solitude to write his first book.

Civil Disobedience and the Walden years: 1845–1849

Thoreau needed to concentrate and get himself working more on his writing. In March 1845, Ellery Channing told Thoreau, "Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no other alternative, no other hope for you." Two months later, Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of that Emerson had bought, from his family home.

On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. (The next day Thoreau was freed, against his wishes, when his aunt paid his taxes.) The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government" explaining his tax resistance at the Concord Lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26: :

Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay entitled ''Resistance to Civil Government'' (also known as ''Civil Disobedience''). In May 1849 it was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the ''Aesthetic Papers''. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley's principle in the political poem ''The Mask of Anarchy'' (1819), that Shelley begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time – and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.

At Walden Pond, he completed a first draft of ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers'', an elegy to his brother, John, that described their 1839 trip to the White Mountains. Thoreau did not find a publisher for this book and instead printed 1,000 copies at his own expense, though fewer than 300 were sold. Thoreau self-published on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson's own publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book.

In August 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip to Mount Katahdin in Maine, a journey later recorded in "Ktaadn," the first part of ''The Maine Woods''.

Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. At Emerson's request, he immediately moved back into the Emerson house to help Lidian manage the household while her husband was on an extended trip to Europe. Over several years, he worked to pay off his debts and also continuously revised his manuscript for what, in 1854, he would publish as ''Walden, or Life in the Woods'', recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, ''Walden'' at first won few admirers, but later critics have regarded it as a classic American work that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.

American poet Robert Frost wrote of Thoreau, "In one book ... he surpasses everything we have had in America."

John Updike wrote in 2004,

Thoreau moved out of Emerson's house in July 1848 and stayed at a home on Belknap Street nearby. In 1850, he and his family moved into a home at 255 Main Street; he stayed there until his death.

Later years: 1851–1862

In 1851, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated with natural history and travel/expedition narratives. He read avidly on botany and often wrote observations on this topic into his journal. He admired William Bartram, and Charles Darwin's ''Voyage of the Beagle''. He kept detailed observations on Concord's nature lore, recording everything from how the fruit ripened over time to the fluctuating depths of Walden Pond and the days certain birds migrated. The point of this task was to "anticipate" the seasons of nature, in his words.

He became a land surveyor and continued to write increasingly detailed natural history observations about the township in his journal, a two-million word document he kept for 24 years. He also kept a series of notebooks, and these observations became the source for Thoreau's late natural history writings, such as ''Autumnal Tints'', ''The Succession of Trees'', and ''Wild Apples'', an essay lamenting the destruction of indigenous and wild apple species.

Until the 1970s, literary critics dismissed Thoreau's late pursuits as amateur science and philosophy. With the rise of environmental history and ecocriticism, several new readings of this matter began to emerge, showing Thoreau to be both a philosopher and an analyst of ecological patterns in fields and woodlots. For instance, his late essay, "The Succession of Forest Trees," shows that he used experimentation and analysis to explain how forests regenerate after fire or human destruction, through dispersal by seed-bearing winds or animals.

He traveled to Quebec once, Cape Cod four times, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his "excursion" books, ''A Yankee in Canada'', ''Cape Cod'', and ''The Maine Woods'', in which travel itineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. Other travels took him southwest to Philadelphia and New York City in 1854, and west across the Great Lakes region in 1861, visiting Niagara Falls, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Mackinac Island. Although provincial in his physical travels, he was extraordinarily well-read and vicariously a world traveler. He obsessively devoured all the first-hand travel accounts available in his day, at a time when the last unmapped regions of the earth were being explored. He read Magellan and James Cook, the arctic explorers Franklin, Mackenzie and Parry, David Livingstone and Richard Francis Burton on Africa, Lewis and Clark; and hundreds of lesser-known works by explorers and literate travelers. Astonishing amounts of global reading fed his endless curiosity about the peoples, cultures, religions and natural history of the world, and left its traces as commentaries in his voluminous journals. He processed everything he read, in the local laboratory of his Concord experience. Among his famous aphorisms is his advice to "live at home like a traveler."

After John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, many prominent voices in the abolitionist movement distanced themselves from Brown, or damned him with faint praise. Thoreau was disgusted by this, and he composed a speech—''A Plea for Captain John Brown''—which was uncompromising in its defense of Brown and his actions. Thoreau's speech proved persuasive: first the abolitionist movement began to accept Brown as a martyr, and by the time of the American Civil War entire armies of the North were literally singing Brown's praises. As a contemporary biographer of John Brown put it: "If, as Alfred Kazin suggests, without John Brown there would have been no Civil War, we would add that without the Concord Transcendentalists, John Brown would have had little cultural impact."

Death

Thoreau contracted tuberculosis in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically afterwards. In 1859, following a late night excursion to count the rings of tree stumps during a rain storm, he became ill with bronchitis. His health declined over three years with brief periods of remission, until he eventually became bedridden. Recognizing the terminal nature of his disease, Thoreau spent his last years revising and editing his unpublished works, particularly ''The Maine Woods'' and ''Excursions'', and petitioning publishers to print revised editions of ''A Week'' and ''Walden''. He also wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak to continue. His friends were alarmed at his diminished appearance and were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded: "I did not know we had ever quarreled."

Aware he was dying, Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing", followed by two lone words, "moose" and "Indian". He died on May 6, 1862 at age 44. Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau's works, and Channing presented a hymn. Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral. Originally buried in the Dunbar family plot, he and members of his immediate family were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (N42° 27' 53.7" W71° 20' 33") in Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau's friend Ellery Channing published his first biography, ''Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist'', in 1873, and Channing and another friend Harrison Blake edited some poems, essays, and journal entries for posthumous publication in the 1890s. Thoreau's journals, which he often mined for his published works but which remained largely unpublished at his death, were first published in 1906 and helped to build his modern reputation. A new, expanded edition of the journals is underway, published by Princeton University Press. Today, Thoreau is regarded as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and the prescience of his views on nature and politics. His memory is honored by the international Thoreau Society.

Beliefs

Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking and canoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. Thoreau was also one of the first American supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution. He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. He wrote in ''Walden'': "The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth."

Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates both nature and culture. His philosophy required that he be a didactic arbitration between the wilderness he based so much on and the spreading mass of North American humanity. He decried the latter endlessly but felt the teachers need to be close to those who needed to hear what he wanted to tell them. He was in many ways a 'visible saint', a point of contact with the wilds, even if the land he lived on had been given to him by Emerson and was far from cut-off. The wildness he enjoyed was the nearby swamp or forest, and he preferred "partially cultivated country." His idea of being "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail," but he also hiked on pristine untouched land. In the essay "Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher" Roderick Nash writes: "Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for the first of three trips to northern Maine. His expectations were high because he hoped to find genuine, primeval America. But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. Instead of coming out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau felt a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of balance." On alcohol, Thoreau wrote: "I would fain keep sober always... I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor... Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"

Influence

Thoreau's writings influenced many public figures. Political leaders and reformers like Mahatma Gandhi, President John F. Kennedy, civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and Russian author Leo Tolstoy all spoke of being strongly affected by Thoreau's work, particularly ''Civil Disobedience.'' So did many artists and authors including Edward Abbey, Willa Cather, Marcel Proust, William Butler Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, E. B. White, Lewis Mumford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Posey and Gustav Stickley. Thoreau also influenced naturalists like John Burroughs, John Muir, E. O. Wilson, Edwin Way Teale, Joseph Wood Krutch, B. F. Skinner, David Brower and Loren Eiseley, whom ''Publisher's Weekly'' called "the modern Thoreau." English writer Henry Stephens Salt wrote a biography of Thoreau in 1890, which popularized Thoreau's ideas in Britain: George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter and Robert Blatchford were among those who became Thoreau enthusiasts as a result of Salt's advocacy.

Mahatma Gandhi first read ''Walden'' in 1906 while working as a civil rights activist in Johannesburg, South Africa. He first read ''Civil Disobedience'' "while he sat in a South African prison for the crime of nonviolently protesting discrimination against the Indian population in the Transvaal. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling its 'incisive logic . . . unanswerable' and referring to Thoreau as 'one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced.'" He told American reporter Webb Miller, "[Thoreau's] ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian Independence. Why I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,' written about 80 years ago."

Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in his autobiography that his first encounter with the idea of non-violent resistance was reading "On Civil Disobedience" in 1944 while attending Morehouse College. He wrote in his autobiography that it was

Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.

American psychologist B. F. Skinner wrote that he carried a copy of Thoreau's ''Walden'' with him in his youth. and, in 1945, wrote ''Walden Two'', a fictional utopia about 1,000 members of a community living together inspired by the life of Thoreau. Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists from Concord were a major inspiration of the composer Charles Ives. The 4th movement of the Concord Sonata for piano (with a part for flute, Thoreau's instrument) is a character picture and he also set Thoreau's words.

Anarchism

Anarchism started to have an ecological point-of-view in the writings of Thoreau. John Zerzan included Thoreau's text "Excursions" (1863) in his edited compilation of works in the anarcho-primitivist tradition titled ''Against civilization: Readings and reflections''. Anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman also appreciated Thoreau and referred to him as "the greatest American anarchist."

Thoreau was an important influence on late 19th century anarchist naturism, the combination of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, and Portugal.

Critique

Thoreau's ideas were not universally applauded by some of his contemporaries in literary circles.

Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson judged Thoreau's endorsement of living alone in natural simplicity, apart from modern society, to be a mark of effeminacy:

...Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain virtuous self-indulgences.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was particularly critical of Thoreau. He wrote that Thoreau, "has repudiated all regular modes of getting a living, and seems inclined to lead a sort of Indian life among civilized men- an Indian life, I mean, as respects the absence of any systematic effort for a livelihood". He would later criticize his writing ability by saying, "There is one chance in a thousand that he might write a most excellent and readable book," but if he did it would be "a book of simple observation of nature, somewhat in the vein of White's History of Selborne".

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier detested what he deemed to be the message of ''Walden'', decreeing that Thoreau wanted man to "lower himself to the level of a woodchuck and walk on four legs." He went further to castigate the work as "very wicked and heathenish", remarking "I prefer walking on two legs."

In response to such criticisms, English novelist George Eliot, writing for the ''Westminster Review'', characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded:

People—very wise in their own eyes—who would have every man's life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may pooh-pooh Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy.

Works

''Aulus Persius Flaccus'' (1840) ''The Service'' (1840) ''A Walk to Wachusett'' (1842) ''Paradise (to be) Regained'' (1843) ''The Landlord'' (1843)

''Sir Walter Raleigh'' (1844)

''Herald of Freedom'' (1844) ''Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum'' (1845)

''Reform and the Reformers'' (1846–48)

''Thomas Carlyle and His Works'' (1847) ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers'' (1849) ''Resistance to Civil Government'', or ''Civil Disobedience'' (1849) ''An Excursion to Canada'' (1853) ''Slavery in Massachusetts'' (1854) ''Walden'' (1854) ''A Plea for Captain John Brown'' (1859) ''Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown'' (1859) ''The Last Days of John Brown'' (1860) ''Walking'' (1861) ''Autumnal Tints'' (1862) ''Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree'' (1862) ''Excursions'' (1863) ''Life Without Principle'' (1863) ''Night and Moonlight'' (1863)

''The Highland Light'' (1864)

''The Maine Woods'' (1864) ''Cape Cod'' (1865) ''Letters to Various Persons'' (1865) ''A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers'' (1866)

''Early Spring in Massachusetts'' (1881)

''Summer'' (1884) ''Winter'' (1888) ''Autumn'' (1892) ''Miscellanies'' (1894) ''Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau'' (1894)

''Poems of Nature'' (1895)

''Some Unpublished Letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau'' (1898)

''The First and Last Journeys of Thoreau'' (1905) ''Journal of Henry David Thoreau'' (1906) ''The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau'' edited by Walter Harding and Carl Bode (Washington Square: New York University Press, 1958)

See also

American philosophy

List of American philosophers

References

Further reading

Bode, Carl. ''Best of Thoreau's Journals''. Southern Illinois University Press. 1967

Botkin, Daniel. ''No Man's Garden''

Dean, Bradley P. ed., ''Letters to a Spiritual Seeker''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Harding, Walter. ''The Days of Henry Thoreau''. Princeton University Press, 1982

Hendrix, George. "The Influence of Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' on Gandhi's Satyagraha." ''The New England Quarterly''. 1956

Howarth, William. ''The Book of Concord: Thoreau's Life as a Writer''. Viking Press, 1982

Myerson, Joel et al. ''The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau''. Cambridge University Press. 1995

Nash, Roderick. ''Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher''

Parrington, Vernon. ''Main Current in American Thought''. V 2 online. 1927

Petroski, Henry. "H. D. Thoreau, Engineer." ''American Heritage of Invention and Technology'', Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 8–16

Richardson, Robert D. ''Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind''. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1986. ISBN 0-520-06346-5

Tauber, Alfred I. ''Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing''. University of California, Berkeley. 2001. ISBN 0-520-23915-6

Thoreau, Henry David. ''Collected Essays and Poems''. Elizabeth Hall Witherell, editor, Library of America, 2001) ISBN 978-1-883011-95-6

_____. ''I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau''. Jeffrey S. Cramer, editor, Yale University Press, 2007

_____. ''The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edition''. Jeffrey S. Cramer, editor, Yale University Press, 2009

_____. ''Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition''. Jeffrey S. Cramer, editor, Yale University Press, 2004

_____. ''A Week, Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod''. Robert F. Sayre, editor, Library of America, 1985 ISBN 0-940450-27-5

_____. ''The Price of Freedom: Excerpts from Thoreau's Journals'' ISBN 978-1-4348-0552-2

Walls, Laura Dassow. ''Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and 19th Century Science''. University of Wisconsin. 1995. ISBN 0-299-14744-4

Historical fiction

Brooks, Geraldine. ''March: A Love Story in a Time of War'' (2006)

External links

The Thoreau Society

The Thoreau Edition

The Thoreau Project

The Walden Woods Project by The Thoreau Institute

The Thoreau Farm Trust – His Birthplace

The Disarming Honesty of Henry David Thoreau, by Frank Chodorov

This Date From Henry David Thoreau's Journal

Who He Was & Why He Matters – by Randall Conrad

H D Thoreau – "a site for everything Thoreau"

Henry David Thoreau – by the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''

Henry Thoreau: Transcendental Economist by Vernon L. Parrington

FAQ with Answers about Thoreau

Texts

The Thoreau Reader by ''The Thoreau Society''

The Writings of Henry David Thoreau at ''The Walden Woods Project''

The Writings of Henry David Thoreau at ''Princeton University Press''

Political & Philosophical Excerpts from Thoreau's Journals

Reflections on a Child's Water Wheel – an Excerpt from Thoreau's 1848 Journal

Scans of Thoreau's Land Surveys at the Concord Free Public Library

Henry David Thoreau Online – The Works and Life of Henry D. Thoreau

Works by Thoreau at Open Library

Category:1817 births Category:1862 deaths Category:19th-century philosophers Category:American Unitarians Category:American abolitionists Category:American anarchists Category:American diarists Category:American environmentalists Category:American essayists Category:American naturalists Category:American nature writers Category:American non-fiction environmental writers Category:American philosophers Category:American poets Category:American political philosophers Category:American spiritual writers Category:American tax resisters Category:American travel writers Category:American vegetarians Category:American nomads Category:Green anarchists Category:Civil disobedience Category:Deaths from tuberculosis Category:Ecological succession Category:American people of French descent Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Individualist anarchists Category:Lecturers Category:Nature writers Category:People associated with Transcendentalism Category:People from Concord, Massachusetts Category:Writers from Massachusetts

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Coordinates	51°43′28″N19°38′16″N
name	Rafael Sabatini
birth date	April 29, 1875
birth place	Jesi, Italy
death date	February 13, 1950
death place	Adelboden, Switzerland
occupation	Novelist
nationality	Italian / British
genre	romance, adventure
notableworks	''Scaramouche'', ''Captain Blood''
portaldisp	}}

Rafael Sabatini (29 April 1875 – 13 February 1950) was an Italian/British writer of novels of romance and adventure.

Life

Rafael Sabatini was born in Jesi, Italy, to an English mother and Italian father. His parents were opera singers who became teachers.

At a young age, Rafael was exposed to many languages, living with his grandfather in England, attending school in Portugal and, as a teenager, in Switzerland. By the time he was seventeen, when he returned to England to live permanently, he was the master of five languages. He quickly added a sixth language – English – to his linguistic collection. He consciously chose to write in his adopted language, because, he said, "all the best stories are written in English."

After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. In 1905 he married Ruth Goad Dixon, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant. It took Sabatini roughly a quarter of a century of hard work before he attained success with ''Scaramouche'' in 1921. The novel, a historical romantic set during the French Revolution, became an international best-seller. It was followed by the equally successful ''Captain Blood'' in 1922. All of his earlier books were rushed into reprints, the most popular of which was ''The Sea Hawk'' from 1915. Sabatini was a prolific writer; he produced a new book approximately every year, and maintained a great deal of popularity with the reading public through the decades that followed.

His only son, Rafael-Angelo (nicknamed Binkie), was killed in a car crash on 1 April 1927. In 1931, he and his wife Ruth divorced. Later that year he moved from London to Hay-on-Wye. In 1935 he married the sculptor Christine Goad, his former sister-in-law. They suffered further tragedy when Christine's son, Lancelot, was killed in a flying accident. On the day he received his RAF wings, he flew his aeroplane over their house, but the plane went out of control and crashed in flames before their eyes.

By the 1940s, illness forced the writer to slow his prolific method of composition. However, he did write several additional works even during that time. He died on 13 February 1950 in Switzerland. He is buried at Adelboden, Switzerland. On his headstone his wife had written, "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad", the first line of ''Scaramouche''.

He is best known for his worldwide best-sellers:

''The Sea Hawk'' (1915), a tale of the Spanish Armada and the pirates of the Barbary Coast;

''Scaramouche'' (1921), a tale of the French Revolution in which a fugitive hides out in a commedia dell'arte troupe and later becomes a fencing master (Sabatini wrote a sequel ten years later);

''Captain Blood'' (1922), in which the title character is admiral of a fleet of pirate ships (Sabatini also wrote two sequels comprising short stories); and

''Bellarion the Fortunate'' (1926), about a cunning young man who finds himself immersed in the politics of fifteenth-century Italy.

Several of his novels were adapted into films during the silent era, and the first three of these books were made into notable films in the sound era, in 1940, 1952, and 1935 respectively. His second novel was made into a famous "lost" film, ''Bardelys the Magnificent'', directed in 1926 by King Vidor with John Gilbert in the lead, and long viewable only in a fragment excerpted in Vidor's silent comedy ''Show People''. A few intact reels have recently been discovered in Europe. The fully restored version premiered on TCM on 11 January 2010.

Two silent adaptations of Sabatini novels which do survive intact are Rex Ingram's ''Scaramouche'' (1923) starring Ramón Novarro, and ''The Sea Hawk'' (1924) directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Milton Sills. This is actually a more faithful adaptation than the 1940 remake with Errol Flynn. A 1924 silent version of ''Captain Blood'', starring J. Warren Kerrigan, is partly lost, surviving only in an incomplete copy in the Library of Congress. ''The Black Swan'' was filmed in 1942 starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara.

In all, Sabatini produced thirty-one novels, eight short story collections, six non-fiction books, numerous uncollected short stories, and a play.

Works

Series

Scaramouche

''Scaramouche'' (1921)

''Scaramouche the King-Maker'' (1931)

Captain Blood

''Captain Blood'' (1922) (also known as ''Captain Blood: His Odyssey'')

''Captain Blood Returns ''(also known as ''The Chronicles of Captain Blood '',1931)

''The Fortunes of Captain Blood ''(1936)

:N.B. ''Captain Blood Returns'' and ''The Fortunes of Captain Blood'' are not sequels, but collections of short stories set entirely within the timeframe of the original novel.

Novels

''The Lovers of Yvonne'' (also known as ''The Suitors of Yvonne '', 1902)

''The Tavern Knight'' (1904)

''Bardelys the Magnificent'' (1905)

''The Trampling of the Lilies'' (1906)

''Love-At-Arms: Being a narrative excerpted from the chronicles of Urbino during the dominion of the High and Mighty Messer Guidobaldo da Montefeltro'' (1907)

''The Shame of Motley'' (1908)

''St. Martin's Summer'' (1909)

''Mistress Wilding'' (also known as ''Anthony Wilding '', 1910)

''The Lion's Skin'' (1911)

''The Strolling Saint'' (1913)

''The Gates of Doom'' (1914)

''The Sea Hawk'' (1915)

''The Snare'' (1917)

''Scaramouche'' (1921)

''Fortune's Fool'' (1923)

''The Carolinian'' (1924)

''Bellarion the Fortunate'' (1926)

''The Hounds of God'' (1928)

''The Romantic Prince'' (1929)

''The King's Minion'' (also known as ''The Minion '', 1930)

''The Black Swan'' (1932)

''The Stalking Horse'' (1933)

''Venetian Masque'' (1934)

''Chivalry'' (1935)

''Scaramis'' (1936)

''The Lost King'' (1937)

''The Sword of Islam'' (1939)

''The Marquis of Carabas'' (also known as ''Master-At-Arms '', 1940)

''Columbus'' (1941)

''King In Prussia'' (also known as ''The Birth of Mischief '', 1944)

''The Gamester'' (1949)

''Saga of the sea'' (1953)

''The Treasure Ship'' (2004)

Collections

''The Justice of the Duke ''(1912)

''The Banner of the Bull ''(1915)

''The Nuptials of Corbal ''(1927)

''The Reaping ''(1929)

''Turbulent Tales ''(1946)

'' Sinner, Saint And Jester: A Trilogy in Romantic Adventure (omnibus, 1954)

''In the Shadow of the Guillotine'' (Omnibus comprising ''Scaramouche'', ''The Marquis of Carabas'' and ''The Lost King '',1955)

''A Fair Head of Angling Stories ''(1989)

''The Fortunes of Casanova and Other Stories '' (1994, stories originally published 1907–21 & 1934)

'' The Outlaws of Falkensteig ''(2000, stories originally published 1900-2)

''The Camisade: And Other Stories of the French Revolution ''(2001, stories originally published 1900–16)

Plays

''The Tyrant: An Episode in the Career of Cesare Borgia, a Play in Four Acts ''(1925)

Anthologies edited

''A Century of Sea Stories ''(1935)

''A Century of Historical Stories ''(1936)

Nonfiction

''The Life of Cesare Borgia ''(1912)

''Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition ''(1913)

''The Historical Nights' Entertainment ''(1917)

''Heroic Lives ''(1934)

External links

Rafael Sabatini.com

Works by Rafael Sabatini at Project Gutenberg of Australia

Works by Rafael Sabatini at Internet Archive. Scanned, illustrated original editions.

Rafael Sabatini Dustjacket Gallery

Sabatini Timeline, a chronology of events in Sabatini's works

Category:1875 births Category:1950 deaths Category:People from Jesi Category:English people of Italian descent Category:Italian writers Category:Italian novelists Category:British novelists Category:British historical novelists Category:Italian historical novelists Category:Nautical historical novelists

bg:Рафаел Сабатини ca:Rafael Sabatini cs:Rafael Sabatini de:Rafael Sabatini es:Rafael Sabatini fr:Rafael Sabatini hy:Ռաֆայել Սաբատինի it:Rafael Sabatini he:רפאל סבטיני ka:რაფაელ საბატინი ja:ラファエル・サバチニ no:Rafael Sabatini pl:Rafael Sabatini ro:Rafael Sabatini ru:Сабатини, Рафаэль fi:Rafael Sabatini sv:Rafael Sabatini uk:Рафаель Сабатіні

Coordinates	51°43′28″N19°38′16″N
name	Edward Elmer Smith
pseudonym	E. E. "Doc" Smith
birth name	Edward Elmer Smith
birth date	May 02, 1890
birth place	Sheboygan, Wisconsin
death date	August 31, 1965
death place	Seaside, Oregon
occupation	Food Engineer and Writer
nationality	American
period	Science Fiction 1928–1965
genre	Space Opera
influenced	Space Travel Fiction,Scientific Developments }}

Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D., also, E. E. Smith, E. E. "Doc" Smith, Doc Smith, "Skylark" Smith, and (to family) Ted (May 2, 1890 – August 31, 1965) was a food engineer (specializing in doughnut and pastry mixes) and early science fiction author who wrote the ''Lensman'' series and the ''Skylark'' series, among others. He is sometimes referred to as the father of space opera.

Biography

Family and education

Edward Elmer Smith was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin on May 2, 1890 to Fred Jay Smith and Caroline Mills Smith, both staunch Presbyterians of British ancestry. His mother was a teacher born in Michigan in February 1855; his father was a sailor, born in Maine in January 1855 to an English father. They moved to Spokane, Washington the winter after Edward Elmer was born, where Mr. Smith was working as a contractor in 1900. In 1902 the family moved to Seneaquoteen, near the Pend Oreille River, in Kootenai County, Idaho. He had four siblings, Rachel M. born September 1882, Daniel M. born January 1884, Mary Elizabeth born February 1886 (all of whom were born in Michigan), and Walter E. born July 1891 in Washington. In 1910, Fred and Caroline Smith and their son Walter were living in the Markham Precinct of Bonner County, Idaho; Fred is listed in census records as a farmer.

Smith worked primarily as a manual laborer until he injured his wrist, at the age of 19, while escaping from a fire. He attended the University of Idaho. He was installed in the 1984 Class of the University of Idaho Alumni Hall of Fame. He entered its prep school in 1907, and graduated with two degrees in Chemical Engineering in 1914. He was president of the Chemistry Club, the Chess Club, and the Mandolin and Guitar Club, and captain of the Drill and Rifle Team; he also sang the bass lead in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. His undergraduate thesis was ''Some Clays of Idaho'', co-written with classmate Chester Fowler Smith, who died in California of tuberculosis the following year, after taking a teaching fellowship at Berkeley. It is not known whether the two were related.

On October 5, 1915, in Boise, Idaho he married Jeanne Craig MacDougall, the sister of his college roommate, Allen Scott (Scotty) MacDougall. (Her sister was named Clarissa MacLean MacDougall; the heroine of the ''Lensman'' novels would later be named Clarissa MacDougall.) Jeanne MacDougall was born in Glasgow, Scotland; her parents were Donald Scott MacDougall, a violinist, and Jessica Craig MacLean. Her father had moved to Boise, Idaho when the children were young, and later sent for his family; he died while they were en route in 1905. Jeanne's mother, who remarried businessman and retired politician John F. Kessler in 1914 worked at, and later owned, a boarding house on Ridenbaugh Street.

The Smiths had three children:

Roderick N., born June 3, 1918 in the District of Columbia (employed as a design engineer at Lockheed Aircraft).

Verna Jean (later Verna Smith Trestrail), born August 25, 1920 in Michigan, his literary executor until her death in 1994. (Her son Kim Trestrail is now the executor.) Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Verna. Clarissa M. (later Clarissa Wilcox), born December 13, 1921 in Michigan.

Early chemical career and the beginning of ''Skylark''

After college, Smith was a junior chemist for the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., developing standards for butter and for oysters. Smith may have served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I, but in what capacity is not known Smith apparently requested exemption from the draft, partly because his wife was solely dependent on him, and partly perhaps because of his service as a civilian chemist in the war effort.

On one evening in 1915, the Smiths were with visiting his former classmate from the University of Idaho, Dr. Carl Garby, who had also moved to Washington, D.C. They lived near the Smiths in the Seaton Place Apartments in Washington with his wife, Lee Hawkins Garby. A long discussion about journeys into outer space ensued. Then, it was suggested to Smith that he should write down his ideas and speculations as a story about interstellar travel. Although he was interested, Smith thought that some amount of romantic elements would be required as well—a task that he found himself uncomfortable with.

Mrs. Garby then made an offer to take care of the love interest and the romantic dialogue, and Smith decided to give it a try. The sources of inspirations for the main characters in the novel were themselves. The "Seatons" were based on the Smiths while the "Cranes" were drawn from the Garbys. About one-third of ''The Skylark of Space'' was completed by the end of 1916, when Smith and Garby gradually abandoned work on it.

Smith earned his master's degree in chemistry from the George Washington University in 1917, studying under Dr. Charles E. Munroe. Smith completed his Ph.D. in chemical engineering, in 1918, emphasizing food engineering with a thesis entitled ''The effect of bleaching with oxides of nitrogen upon the baking quality and commercial value of wheat flour'', which was published in 1919. Warner and Fleischer instead give the thesis title as ''The Effect of the Oxides of Nitrogen upon the Carotin Molecule — C40H56'', which is difficult to explain. Sam Moskowitz instead gives the date of the degree as 1919, which may reflect the differences between the thesis submission date, its defense date, and the degree certification date.

Writing ''Skylark''

In 1919 Dr. Smith was hired as chief chemist for F. W. Stock & Sons of Hillsdale, Michigan, at one time the largest family-owned mill east of the Mississippi, working on doughnut mixes.

Late in 1919, after moving to Michigan, one evening Smith was baby-sitting (presumably for Roderick) while his wife attended a movie; he resumed work on ''The Skylark of Space'', finishing it in the spring of 1920. He submitted it to many book publishers and magazines, spending more in postage than he would eventually receive for its publication. He received an encouraging rejection letter from Bob Davis, editor of ''Argosy'', in 1922, saying that he liked the novel personally, but that it was too far out for his readers. (According to Warner, but no other source, Dr. Smith began work on the sequel, ''Skylark III'', before the first book was accepted.) Finally, upon seeing the April 1927 issue of ''Amazing Stories'', he submitted it to the magazine; it was accepted, initially for $75, later raised to $125. It was published in the August–October 1928 issues. It was such a success that managing editor T. O'Conor Sloane requested a sequel before the second installment had been published.

Mrs. Garby was not interested in collaborating further, so Dr. Smith began work on ''Skylark Three'' on his own. It was published in the August through October 1930 issues of ''Amazing.'' (In 1930 the Smiths were living in Michigan, at 33 Rippon Avenue in Hillsdale.) This was as far as he had planned to take the ''Skylark'' series; it was praised in ''Amazing'''s letter column, and he was paid 3/4¢ per word, surpassing ''Amazing'''s previous record of half a cent.

The early 1930s: between ''Skylark'' and ''Lensman''

Dr. Smith then began work on what he intended as a new series, starting with ''Spacehounds of IPC,'' which he finished in the autumn of 1930. In this novel he took pains to avoid the scientific impossibilities which had bothered some readers of the ''Skylark'' novels. Even in 1938, after he had written ''Galactic Patrol'', Dr. Smith considered it his finest work; he later said of it, "This was really scientific fiction; not, like the Skylarks, pseudo-science"; and even at the end of his career he considered it his only work of true science fiction. It was published in the July through September 1931 issues of ''Amazing'', but with unauthorized changes by Sloane. Fan letters in the magazine complained about the novel's containment within the solar system, and Sloane sided with the readers. So when Harry Bates, editor of Astounding Stories, offered Smith 2¢/word—payable on publication—for his next story, he agreed; this meant that it could not be a sequel to ''Spacehounds.''

This book would be ''Triplanetary'', "in which scientific detail would not be bothered about, and in which his imagination would run riot." Indeed, characters within the story point out its psychological and scientific implausibilities, and sometimes even seem to suggest self-parody. At other times they are conspicuously silent about obvious implausibilities. The January 1933 issue of ''Astounding'' announced that ''Triplanetary'' would appear in the March issue, and that issue's cover illustrated a scene from the story, but ''Astounding'''s financial difficulties prevented the story from appearing. Dr. Smith then submitted the manuscript to ''Wonder Stories'', whose editor, Charles D. Hornig, rejected it, later boasting about the rejection in a fanzine. He finally submitted it to ''Amazing'', which published it beginning in January 1934, but for only half a cent a word. Shortly after it was accepted, F. Orlin Tremaine, the new editor of the revived ''Astounding'', offered one cent a word for ''Triplanetary;'' when he learned that he was too late, he suggested a third ''Skylark'' novel instead.

In the winter of 1933-4 Dr. Smith worked on ''The Skylark of Valeron'', but he felt that the story was getting out of control; he sent his first draft to Tremaine, with a distraught note asking for suggestions. Tremaine accepted the rough draft for $850, and announced it in the June 1934 issue, with a full-page editorial and a three-quarter page advertisement. The novel was published in the August 1934 through February 1935 issues. ''Astounding'''s circulation rose by 10,000 for the first issue, and its two main competitors, ''Amazing'' and ''Wonder Stories'' fell into financial difficulties, both skipping issues within a year.

The ''Lensman'' series

In January 1936, a time period where he was already an established science fiction writer, he took a job for salary plus profit-sharing, as a food technologist (a cereal chemist) at the Dawn Doughnut Company of Jackson, Michigan. This initially entailed almost a year's worth of eighteen-hour days and seven-day workweeks. Individuals who knew Dr. Smith confirmed that he had a role in developing mixes for doughnuts and other pastries, but the contention that he developed the first process for making powdered sugar adhere to doughnuts cannot be substantiated. Dr. Smith was reportedly dislocated from his job at Dawn Doughnuts due to pre-war rationing in early 1940.

Dr. Smith had been contemplating writing a "space-police novel" since early 1927; once he had "the Lensmen's universe fairly well set up", he reviewed his science fiction collection for "cops-and-robbers" stories. He cites Clinton Constantinescue's "War of the Universe" as a negative example, and Starzl and Williamson as positive ones. Tremaine responded extremely positively to a brief description of the idea.

Once Dawn Doughnuts became profitable in late 1936, Dr. Smith wrote an eighty-five page outline for what became the four core ''Lensman'' novels; in early 1937 Tremaine committed to buying them. Segmenting the story into four novels required considerable effort to avoid dangling loose ends; Dr. Smith cites Edgar Rice Burroughs as a negative example. After the outline was complete, he wrote a more detailed outline of ''Galactic Patrol'', plus a detailed graph of its structure, with "peaks of emotional intensity and the valleys of characterization and background material." He notes, however, that he was never able to follow any of his outlines at all closely, as the "characters get away from me and do exactly as they damn please." After completing the rough draft of ''Galactic Patrol'', he wrote the concluding chapter of the last book in the series, ''Children of the Lens.'' ''Galactic Patrol'' was published in the September 1937 through February 1938 issues of ''Astounding''; unlike the revised book edition, it was not set in the same universe as ''Triplanetary''.

''Gray Lensman'', the second book in the series, appeared in ''Astounding's'' October 1939 through January 1940 issues. (Note that the frequent British spelling "grey" is simply a recurrent mistake, starting with the cover of the first installment; Moskowitz's usage, ''"The Grey Lensman",'' is even harder to justify.) ''Gray Lensman'' (and its cover illustration) was extremely well received. Campbell's editorial in the December issue suggested that the October issue was the best issue of ''Astounding'' ever, and ''Gray Lensman'' was first place in the ''Analytical Laboratory'' statistics "by a lightyear", with three runners-up in a distant tie for third place. The cover was also praised by readers in ''Brass Tacks'', and Campbell noted, "We got a letter from E. E. Smith saying he and Hubert Rogers agreed on how Kinnison looked."

Dr. Smith was the guest of honor at Chicon I, the second World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chicago over Labor Day weekend 1940, giving a speech on the importance of science fiction fandom entitled "What Does This Convention Mean?" He attended the convention's masquerade as C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith, and met fans living near him in Michigan, who would later form the Galactic Roamers, which previewed and advised him on his future work.

Dr. Smith worked for the US Army between 1941 and 1945. An extended segment in the novel version of ''Triplanetary'', set during World War II, suggests intimate familiarity with explosives and munitions manufacturing. Some biographers cite as fact that, just as Smith's protagonist in this segment lost his job over failure to approve sub-standard munitions, Smith did as well. Smith began work for the J. W. Allen Company (a manufacturer of doughnut and frosting mixes) in 1946 and worked for them until his professional retirement in 1957.

Retirement and late writing

After Dr. Smith retired, he and his wife lived in Clearwater, Florida, in the fall and winter, driving the smaller of their two trailers to Seaside, Oregon, each April, often stopping at science fiction conventions on the way. (Dr. Smith did not like to fly.) In 1963, he was presented the inaugural First Fandom Hall of Fame award at the 21st World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C. Some of his biography is captured in an essay by Robert A. Heinlein, which was reprinted in the collection ''Expanded Universe'' in 1980. There is a more detailed, although allegedly error-ridden, biography in Sam Moskowitz's ''Seekers of Tomorrow.''

Robert A. Heinlein and Dr. Smith were friends. (Heinlein dedicated his 1958 novel ''Methuselah's Children'' "To Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.") Heinlein reported that E. E. Smith perhaps took his "unrealistic" heroes from life, citing as an example the extreme competence of the hero of ''Spacehounds of IPC''. He reported that E. E. Smith was a large, blond, athletic, very intelligent, very gallant man, married to a remarkably beautiful, intelligent red-haired woman named MacDougal (thus perhaps the prototypes of 'Kimball Kinnison' and 'Clarissa MacDougal'). In Heinlein's essay, he reports that he began to suspect Smith might be a sort of "superman" when he asked Dr. Smith for help in purchasing a car. Smith tested the car by driving it on a back road at illegally high speeds with their heads pressed tightly against the roof columns to listen for chassis squeaks by bone conduction—a process apparently improvised on the spot.

In his non-series novels written after his professional retirement, ''Galaxy Primes'', ''Subspace Explorers'', and ''Subspace Encounter'', E. E. Smith explores themes of telepathy and other mental abilities collectively called "psionics", and of the conflict between libertarian and socialistic/communistic influences in the colonization of other planets.

Lord Tedric

Dr. Smith wrote a novelette entitled "Lord Tedric", published in ''Other Worlds'' in 1952, and which was almost completely forgotten.

Much later, 13 years after Dr. Smith's death, Gordon Eklund published another novel of the same name about the same fictional character, introducing it as "a new series conceived by E. E. 'Doc' Smith". Eklund later went on to publish the other novels in the series, one or two under the pseudonym "E. E. 'Doc' Smith" or "E. E. Smith". The protagonist possesses similar heroic qualities common to the heroes in Dr. Smith's original novels and can communicate with an extra-dimensional race of beings known as The Scientists, whose archenemy is Fra Villion, a mysterious character described as a dark knight, skilled in whip-sword combat, and evil genius behind the creation of a planetoid-sized "iron sphere" armed with a weapon capable of destroying planets. As a result, Dr. Smith is believed by many to be the unacknowledged progenitor of themes that would appear in ''Star Wars''.

Critical opinion

Smith's novels are generally considered to be the classic space operas, and he is sometimes called the "first nova" of twentieth century science fiction.

Dr. Smith expressed a preference for inventing fictional technologies that were not strictly impossible (so far as the science of the day was aware) but highly unlikely: "the more highly improbable a concept is—short of being contrary to mathematics whose fundamental operations involve no neglect of infinitesimals—the better I like it" was his phrase.

Extending the ''Lensman'' universe

''Vortex Blasters'' (also known as ''Masters of the Vortex'') is set in the same universe as the ''Lensman'' novels. It is an extension to the main storyline which takes place between ''Second Stage Lensmen'' and ''Children of the Lens'', and introduces a different type of psionics from that used by the Lensmen. ''Spacehounds of IPC'' is not a part of the series, despite occasional erroneous statements to the contrary. (It is listed as a novel in the series in some paperback editions of the 1970s.)

Robert A. Heinlein reported that Smith had planned a seventh ''Lensman'' novel, set after the events described in ''Children of the Lens'', which was unpublishable at that time (the early 1960s). Smith told Heinlein that the new novel proceeded inexorably from unresolved matters in ''Children'', a statement easily supported by a careful reading of ''Children''. Careful searches by people who knew Smith well (including Frederik Pohl, Smith's editor, and Verna Smith Trestrail, Smith's daughter) have failed to locate any material related to such a story. Smith apparently never wrote any of it down.

On 14 July 1965, barely a month before his death, Smith gave written permission to William B. Ellern to continue the ''Lensman'' series, which led to the publishing of "Moon Prospector" in 1965 and ''New Lensman'' in 1976. Smith's long-time friend, Dave Kyle, wrote three authorized added novels in the Lensman series that provided background about the major non-human Lensmen.

Influence on science and the military

Smith was widely read by scientists and engineers from the 1930s into the 1970s. Literary precursors of ideas which arguably entered the military-scientific complex include SDI (''Triplanetary''), stealth (''Gray Lensman''), the OODA Loop, C3-based warfare, and the AWACS (''Gray Lensman'').

An influence that is inarguable was described in an 11 June 1947 letter to Doc from John W. Campbell (the editor of ''Astounding'' magazine, where much of the ''Lensman'' series was originally published). In it, Campbell relayed Captain Cal Laning's acknowledgment that he had used Smith's ideas for displaying the battlespace situation (called the "tank" in the stories) in the design of the United States Navy's ships' Combat Information Centers. "The entire set-up was taken specifically, directly, and consciously from the ''Directrix''. In your story, you reached the situation the Navy was in—more communication channels than integration techniques to handle it. You proposed such an integrating technique and proved how advantageous it could be. You, sir, were 100% right. As the Japanese Navy—not the hypothetical Boskonian fleet—learned at an appalling cost."

One underlying theme of the later ''Lensman'' novels was the difficulty in maintaining military secrecy—as advanced capabilities are revealed, the opposing side can often duplicate them. This point was also discussed extensively by John Campbell in his letter to Doc. Also in the later Lensman novels, and particular after the "Battle of Klovia" broke the Boskonian's power base at the end of ''Second Stage Lensmen'', the Boskonian forces and particularly Kandron of Onlo reverted to terroristic tactics to attempt to demoralize Civilization, thus providing an early literary glimpse into this modern problem of both law enforcement and military response. The use of "Vee-two" gas by the pirates attacking the ''Hyperion'' in ''Triplanetary'' (in both magazine and book appearances) also suggests anticipation of the terrorist uses of poison gases.

The beginning of the story the ''Skylark of Space'' describes in relative detail the protagonists research into separation of platinum group residues, subsequent experiments involving electrolysis and the discovery of a process evocative of cold fusion (over 50 years before Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann). He describes a nuclear process yielding large amounts of energy and producing only negligible radioactive waste—which then goes on to form the basis of the adventures in the Skylark books. Smith's general description of the process of discovery is highly evocative of Röntgen's descriptions of his discovery of the X-ray.

Another theme of the ''Skylark'' novels involves precursors of modern information technology. The humanoid aliens encountered in the first novel have developed a primitive technology called the "mechanical educator", which allows direct conversion of brain waves into intelligible thought for transmission to others or for electrical storage. By the third novel in the series, ''Skylark of Valeron'', this technology has grown into an "Electronic Brain" which is capable of computation on all "bands" of energy—electromagnetism, gravity, and "tachyonic" energy and radiation bands included. This is itself derived from a discussion of reductionist atomic theory in the second novel, ''Skylark Three'', which brings to mind modern quark and sub-quark theories of elementary particle physics.

Literary influences on Smith's writing

In his 1947 essay "The Epic of Space", Smith listed (by last name only) authors he enjoyed reading: John W. Campbell, L. Sprague de Camp, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt (specifically ''The Ship of Ishtar'', ''The Moon Pool'', ''The Snake Mother'', and ''Dwellers in the Mirage'', as well as the character John Kenton), C.L. Moore (specifically Jirel of Joiry), Roman Frederick Starzl, John Taine, A.E. van Vogt, Stanley G. Weinbaum (specifically Tweerl), and Jack Williamson. In a passage on his preparation for writing the Lensman novels, he notes that Clinton Constantinescu's "War of the Universe" was not a masterpiece, but says that Starzl and Williamson were masters; this suggests that Starzl's Interplanetary Flying Patrol may have been an influence on Smith's Triplanetary Patrol, later the Galactic Patrol. The feeding of the Overlords of Delgon upon the life-force of their victims at the end of chapter five of ''Galactic Patrol'' seems a clear allusion to chapter twenty-nine of ''The Moon Pool;'' Merritt's account of the Taithu and the power of love in chapters twenty-nine and thirty-four also bear some resemblance to the end of ''Children of the Lens.'' Smith also mentions Edgar Rice Burroughs, complaining about loose ends at the end of one of his novels.

Smith acknowledges the help of the Galactic Roamers writers' workshop, plus E. Everett Evans, Ed Counts, an unnamed aeronautical engineer, Dr. James Enright, and Dr. Richard W. Dodson. Smith's daughter, Verna, lists the following authors as visitors to the Smith household in her youth: Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, Heinlein, Dave Kyle, Bob Tucker, Williamson, Frederik Pohl, Merritt, and the Galactic Roamers. Smith cites Bigelow's ''Theoretical Chemistry–Fundamentals'' as a justification for the possibility of the inertialess drive. There is also an extended reference to Rudyard Kipling's "Ballad of Boh Da Thon" in ''Gray Lensman'' (chapter 22, "Regeneration," in a conversation between Kinnison and MacDougall).

Sam Moskowitz's biographical essay on Smith in ''Seekers of Tomorrow'' states that he regularly read ''Argosy'' magazine, and everything by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Moskowitz also notes that Smith's "reading enthusiasms included poetry, philosophy, ancient and medieval history, and all of English literature." (Smith's grandson notes that he spoke, and sang, German.) The influence of these is not readily apparent, except in the Roman section of ''Triplanetary'', and in the impeccable but convoluted grammar of Smith's narration. Some influence of nineteenth century philosophy of language may be detectable in the account in ''Galactic Patrol'' of the Lens of Arisia as a universal translator, which is reminiscent of Frege's strong realism about ''Sinn'', that is, thought or sense.

Both Moskowitz and Smith's daughter Verna Smith Trestrail report that Smith had a troubled relationship with John Campbell, the editor of ''Astounding''. It is noteworthy that Smith's most successful works were published under Campbell, but the degree of influence is uncertain. The original outline for the ''Lensman'' series had been accepted by F. Orlin Tremaine, and Smith angered Campbell by showing loyalty to Tremaine at his new magazine, ''Comet'', when he sold him "The Vortex Blaster" in 1941. Campbell's announcement of ''Children of the Lens'', in 1947, was less than enthusiastic. Campbell later said that he published it only reluctantly, though he praised it privately, and bought little from Smith thereafter.

Derivative works and influence on popular culture

Randall Garrett wrote a parody entitled ''Backstage Lensman'' which Dr. Smith reportedly enjoyed. Harry Harrison also parodied Smith's work in the novel, ''Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers''.

Garrett also included a reference to Dr. Smith in his ''Lord Darcy'' novels; the badge of the Royal Messengers resembles the Lens, and the spell to activate one was devised by a wizard named Dr Edward Elmer.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke's space battle in ''Earthlight'' was based on the attack on the Mardonalian fortress in chapter seven of ''Skylark Three''.

Steve 'Slug' Russell wrote one of the first computer games, ''Spacewar!'', with inspiration from the space battles from the Lensman series.

The GURPS role-playing game includes a worldbook based on the Lensman series.

There is a Japanese ''Lensman'' anime, but it is more an imitation of ''Star Wars'' than a translation of the ''Lensman'' novels. Efforts to print translations of the associated manga in the United States in the early 1990s without payment of royalties to the Smith family were successfully blocked in court by Verna Smith Trestrail with the help of several California science fiction authors and fans.

In his biography, George Lucas reveals that the ''Lensman'' novels were a major influence on his youth. J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the science fiction television series ''Babylon 5'', also has acknowledged the influence of the Lensman books. Superman-creator Jerry Siegel was impressed, at an early age, with the optimistic vision of the future presented in ''Skylark of Space''.

Two members of the Green Lantern Corps are named Arisia and Eddore.

Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment and Universal Studios are in negotiation with the Smith estate for an 18-month film rights option on the series.

Fictional appearances

Doc himself appears as a character in the 2006 novel ''The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril'' by Paul Malmont. The novel describes friendship and rivalry among pulp writers of the 1930s. He also appears as "Lensman Ted Smith" in the 1980 novel ''The Number of the Beast'' by Robert A. Heinlein.

Bibliography

Series

Lensman # ''Triplanetary'' (Amazing Stories Jan–Apr 1934, Fantasy Press 1948) # ''First Lensman'' (Fantasy Press 1950) # ''Galactic Patrol'' (Astounding Stories Sep 1937–Feb 1938, Fantasy Press 1950) # ''Gray Lensman'' (Astounding Stories Oct 1939–Jan 1940, Fantasy Press 1951) # ''Second Stage Lensmen'' (Astounding Stories Nov 1941–Feb 1942, Fantasy Press 1953) # ''The Vortex Blaster'', also known as ''Masters of the Vortex'' ("The Vortex Blaster", ''Comet Stories'' July 1941, "Storm Cloud on Deka", ''Astonishing Stories'' June 1942, "The Vortex Blaster Makes War", ''Astonishing Stories'' Oct 1942. Revised and expanded book version Gnome Press 1960) # ''Children of the Lens'' (Astounding Stories Nov 1947–Feb 1948, Fantasy Press 1954)

Skylark # ''The Skylark of Space'' (written 1915–1920 with Mrs. Lee Hawkins Garby, Amazing Stories Aug–Oct 1928, Buffalo Book Co. 1946. Paperback edition, heavily revised and without the co-author credit, Pyramid Books 1958) # ''Skylark Three'' (Amazing Stories Aug–Oct 1930, Fantasy Press 1948) # ''Skylark of Valeron'' (Astounding Stories Aug 1934–Feb 1935, Fantasy Press 1949) # ''Skylark DuQuesne'' (Worlds of If Jun–Oct 1965, Pyramid Books 1966)

Subspace # ''Subspace Explorers'' (Canaveral Press 1965, Ace 1968; the first 30 pages of the book appeared in Astounding Jul 1960) # ''Subspace Encounter'' (1983)

Family D'Alembert (with Stephen Goldin—in fact only parts of the first book are by Smith, the rest is by Goldin based on Smith's novella) # ''Imperial Stars'' (1976) # ''Stranglers' Moon'' (1976) # ''The Clockwork Traitor'' (1976) # ''Getaway World'' (1977) # ''Appointment at Bloodstar'', also known as The Bloodstar Conspiracy (1978) # ''The Purity Plot'' (1978) # ''Planet of Treachery'' (1981) # ''Eclipsing Binaries'' (1983) # ''The Omicron Invasion'' (1984) # ''Revolt of the Galaxy'' (1985)

Lord Tedric (by Gordon Eklund based on an EES novella) # ''Lord Tedric'' (1978) # ''The Space Pirates'' (1979) # ''Black Knight of the Iron Sphere'' (1979) # ''Alien Realms'' (1980)

Non-series novels and collections

''Spacehounds of IPC'' (Amazing Stories Jul–Sep 1931, Fantasy Press 1947, Ace 1966)

''The Galaxy Primes'' (Amazing Stories Mar–May 1959, Ace 1965. Dr. Smith expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the editing of this novel.)

''Masters of Space'' (1976) (with E. Everett Evans)

Non-fiction

''Some Clays of Idaho'', (with Chester Fowler Smith) undergraduate thesis, University of Idaho, 1914. ''The effect of bleaching with oxides of nitrogen upon the baking quality and commercial value of wheat flour'', Ph.D. thesis, George Washington University, 1919, approximately 100 pp. "A study of some of the chemical changes which occur in oysters during their preparation for market", Bureau of Chemistry, U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin 740, 1919, 24 pp. "Viscosity and Baking Quality", ''Cereal Chemistry'' 2, 178-89, 1925. "Report of the Subcommittee on Hydrogen-Ion Concentration with Special Reference to the Effect of Flour Bleach", ''Cereal Chemistry'' 9, 424–8, 1932.

"Catastrophe" (''Astounding Science Fiction'' May 1938).

Worldcon Guest of Honor Speech, originally presented at Chicon I on September 1, 1940. To be published in ''Worldcon Guest of Honor Speeches'', edited by Mike Resnick and Joe Siclari, ISFiC Press, August 23, 2006.

"The Epic of Space" in ''Of Worlds Beyond: The Science of Science Fiction Writing'', edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach (Fantasy Press 1947; includes a biographical sketch).

Introduction to ''Man of Many Minds'' by E. Everett Evans (Fantasy Press 1953).

Secondary sources

Contains a biographical sketch on p. 4, which is included in the excerpt at Steve Jackson Games.

Ethan Fleischer Selectively Annotated English Primary Source Bibliography.

Ethan Fleischer Z9M9Z: A Lensman Website

Gharlane of Eddore (1998). Lensman FAQ http://www.chronology.org/noframes/lens/.

Robert A. Heinlein (1979). "Larger Than Life", written for MosCon I, published in .

Sam Moskowitz (1942). "Doughnut Specialist Smith Blasts Vortices in His Spare Time", ''Astonishing Stories'', June 1942, p. 6. Biographical note accompanying "Storm Cloud on Deka", which is inconsistent with other sources. Unsigned; attribution per Ellik, Evans, & Lewis p. 262.

Frederik Pohl (1964). "Ode to a Skylark", ''If'', May 1964. Reprinted in Lucchetti, pp. 11–15.

* (2009) Doc “Skylark” Smith

8pp. Reprint of an article in ''Fantasy Review'', 1948. Describes itself as an interview, but is mostly an essay with some extended quotations.

Verna Smith Trestrail (presumably 1979). MosCon I Keynote Speech, unpublished typewritten notes.

Harry Warner (1938). Brief biography in Spaceways Volume 1, #1.

References

External links

Edward E. Smith at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

''Skylark Three'' (original magazine version)

''Spacehounds of IPC'' (original magazine version)

Category:1890 births Category:1965 deaths Category:American science fiction writers Category:Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Boise, Idaho Category:People from Sheboygan, Wisconsin Category:People from Seaside, Oregon Category:Writers from Wisconsin Category:University of Idaho alumni Category:George Washington University alumni Category:Worldcon Guests of Honor Category:American Presbyterians Category:Writers from Idaho

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